Enhancing outcomes and reducing inhibitors to the engagement of students and staff in learning and teaching partnerships: implications for academic development

A growing body of literature on students as partners in learning and teaching offers evidence on which academic developers can draw when supporting, advocating for, or engaging in partnerships. We extend a previous systematic review of the partnership literature by presenting an analysis and discussion of the positive and negative outcomes of partnership, and the inhibitors to partnership. Implications include the importance of academic developers supporting: the relational processes of partnership; institutional or structural change to address resistance; and the potential of partnership to make institutions more equitable and empowering spaces.     

澳大利亚广告专业本科教育特色及启示

澳大利亚的大学除了8所联盟大学（G8）为研究型大学外,其余大学多属于研究与教学型大学,主要培养应用型人才。澳大利亚的广告专业起源和发展都离不开产业发展,对学生和教师进行职业化培养是澳大利亚广告教育的突出特点。在教学上具有以教师为中心的集中授大课和以学生为中心分组讨论小课相结合、详细的评分体系及先进的教学设备和教学辅助手段等特色。这些办学特色对于我国的本科大学广告专业建设具有借鉴作用。如可以考虑构建有广告行业公司和行业学(协)会参与的广告类人才培养机制、进行多学科综合背景下的广告人才培养和重视教师职业的培养     

Assessing contributions to group assignments

We report the use of a combination of self‐ and peer‐assessment in an undergraduate social psychology laboratory course. Students worked in small groups on a self‐directed empirical project that they each wrote up independently as a laboratory report. Marks for the written assignment were moderated by a contribution index measure based on the self‐ and peer‐assessment measures. Our analyses indicated that: (i) students took the peer‐assessment process seriously, clearly differentiating between group members on the contributions questionnaires; (ii) students show a self‐bias, rating their own contribution to the group task higher than that of other group members; (iii) for a large majority of students the contribution index resulted in very little moderation of the final assignment marks; (iv) there was a strong correlation between the contribution index and the overall assignment score. Implications for the assessment of group work are considered.     

Demographic profiling of British Olympic equestrian athletes in the twenty-first century

Analyses of the determinants for participation in specific sports have been neglected and the use of demographic profiling in equestrian sports is limited. The aim of this research was to compare demographic profiles of British Olympic equestrian athletes, across and within disciplines, and suggest implications for the national federation’s micro-level athlete development strategy. Data were collected about all Team GB equestrian competitors over the last five Olympic Games. Equestrian sports are not organised by sex segregation, however no female showjumping competitors have represented Team GB in the twenty-first century. Competitors ranged in age over five decades and support the unusual early start-late specialisation paradigm, introduced by the national federation in 2007. Horse ownership is unusual amongst competitors, although it is more common amongst male athletes. The inter-athlete variation and inter-discipline variation these athletes show post challenges to the single development strategy currently in use.     

“A Question Everybody Danced Around”: Gay Men Making Sense of Their Identities in Christian Colleges

Despite broader social changes in attitudes and policies regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people, the space available for gay students to develop and express their identities in Christian colleges provides only limited and fleeting relief because of the culture of heteronormativity central to their history and identity. Yet, in an era of enrollment competition in higher education, Christian colleges must navigate their traditional mission to preserve and advance the faith, changing cultural attitudes regarding LBGTQ people, and the financial realities facing contemporary institutions. This article draws from interviews with men who attended Christian colleges. First, we present their narratives to render the presence of LGBTQ people visible in these sites. Second, we seek to understand how these men made sense of their sexualities within educational cultures saturated with retention imperatives, institutional surveillance, and denominational ambivalence or hostility about LGBTQ persons. The men's narratives highlight the challenges they faced as “unfit subjects” (Pillow, 2004 Pillow, W. (2004). Unfit subjects: Educational policy and the teen mother. New York, NY: Routledge.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), their absorption of normative constructions of gender and sexuality governing their educational context, and the need for Christian colleges to better serve their gay students of faith.     

The relations among young children's peer-reported trustworthiness, inhibitory control, and preschool adjustment

Sixty-five (38 male and 27 female) preschool children (mean age = 5 years 1 month) completed measures of peers’ trustworthiness (promise keeping and secret keeping). Teachers rated the preschool children's inhibitory control, trustworthiness, and preschool adjustment. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) yielded support for the hypothesized model. The expected positive paths were found from (1) gender to preschool adjustment and inhibitory control, (2) age to peer-reported trustworthiness, (3) peer-reported trustworthiness to preschool adjustment, (4) inhibitory control to peer-reported trustworthiness, and (5) inhibitory control to preschool adjustment. The findings confirmed the hypothesized development of trustworthiness with age and girls’ advantage over boys in inhibitory control and preschool adjustment. The findings supported the hypotheses that trustworthiness is associated with preschool adjustment and mediates, in part, the relation between inhibitory control and preschool adjustment.     

Intergenerational learning at a nature center: families using prior experiences and participation frameworks to understand raptors

Using a sociocultural framework to approach intergenerational learning, this inquiry examines learning processes used by families during visits to one nature center. Data were collected from videotaped observations of families participating in an environmental education program and a follow-up task to draw the habitat of raptors. Based on a thematic analysis, researchers developed two themes about the learning processes at play in the nature center, related to the use of prior knowledge. First, families’ prior knowledge used at the nature center came from informal education activities: (a) observation in the outdoors and spaces designed to represent an aspect of nature, (b) media (including books and Internet), and (c) experiences at informal education institutions. Second, when sharing prior knowledge, participation frameworks were created through the conversation that leveled the hierarchy between parent and child allowing for negotiation and collaborative idea formation. In the nature center, families valued social harmony by positioning their children as capable contributors of environmental knowledge. Suggestions to researchers taking a sociocultural approach are given, including the potential of ‘participation frameworks’ as an analytical tool to study learning interactions and as a potential tool for environmental educators to encourage families to create roles and structures for successful learning outcomes in nature centers.